Category Archives: UPDATE

Vessels to Motherland – ‘Machine Lieder’
a collection of songs by machines imbued with human urges. Screaming out of metal shells are memories of distant worlds, cries for lost connections, dreams of a digital utopia, soliloquies on the human condition. A song cycle for cyborgs, it expresses the complexity of the modern world. It is a return to sources and a scratch dance of immortality. A bright whisper from the future, and a muffled scream from inside the power plant.

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[mt138cd] Dave Gilden – ‘Texas Chainsaw Dopefiend’ CD
Originally released on cassette in 1996, TCD is, at it’s core, a Mother Savage ‘mega-mix’ composition of Gilden’s work as engineered by Joseph Roemer and Rodger Stella — encompassing his projects Sawgasm, Crackhouse, Depress/Regress, and work under his own name as the source material for a manic amphetamine-fueled journey through the highs and lows of various chemical states; encompassing unhinged harsh sessions that build to abrupt jump cuts and inspired use of the stereo field, primitive caveman percussion, psychedelic tape collage with short samples of Big Black and The Decline of Western Civilization along the way, all layered and edited with surgical precision — a true masterwork of advanced and inventive tape composition using the primitive instruments of 1990’s recording technology well beyond their capabilities. The 90’s brought many instant classics to the noise genre, but TCD stands above them all as perfection, and should be viewed as a benchmark going forward. This transfer of the original master tape, done by William Hutson (Rale, clipping.), has been carefully engineered to preserve and enhance the quality of the original without compromising it’s integrity. Edition of 300 copies in digipack. Co-released with new Swedish imprint S.A.P., who will handle all European sales and distribution.

[mt139cd] Vasculae – ‘Broken Lust’ CD
The distant clang and scrape of metals, slow burning atmospherics, and subdued electronics both tonal and textured; less blast and more resignation this time around. Mostly recorded and composed in early 2020 and slowly picked at during the first cycle of the end times. The soundtrack to the death rattles of this life cycle, foreshadowing a slow-motion chemical apocalypse; Let it burn, let it crumble, just let me get some hedonism out of the way before it’s too late. Three tracks designed as variations on a theme utilizing similar compositional arcs and narratives, with the extra fourth track being a “performance mix” — utilizing the same sources — created for Tabitha Piseno’s ‘Noise & Politics’ on Montez Press Radio in March 2020, as well as the arc of two live performances in Los Angeles just as the world shut down. Edition of 300 copies in digipack.

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CONTUMACE – ‘MATT’ 7€
Lionel Fernandez temporarily abandons his Sister Iodine power-trio to engage in a static bullfight with himself. Synthetic miniatures & frequency lacerations. Austere concatenations & petrified movements. 666 pairs of sunglasses in the country of eternal night. Social distancing guaranteed.

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Beast Flower Coiffeuse – ‘Enveloped By Its Dilated Ambit, Resorbed In Creamed Encystment upon the ill-starred…’
Coextensive with presentiment, yet sadly occurs with bloated frequency, genital lividity callously slaps the lips of juvenescence. Slaked at the burbling spring of dermatology clinic secretions, rudely sipped. Ex vivo digestion of playdate proteins, chancroid in nature, gawk goodbye to chubsy, wubsy & blushful. Queasy shrine to some, incessant disquietude to Sunday sleepover coterie. Hot under the zipper. Only intended for maturing audiences.

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Distant Animals – ‘The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest’
The Frequency of the Heart at Rest uses a custom tuning system (based upon multiplications of the frequency of the human heart whilst sleeping) to construct a dense, enigmatic sound world. Modular synthesis, alongside violins, trumpets, and percussion, are processed through reels of analogue tape, the speed of their playback on the tape adjusted in order to match the works bespoke tuning system. Parts have been re-recorded several times over, their distinct tonalities bleeding into one another to create a unified, claustrophobic sonic tapestry. Drawn from the composer’s own battles with extreme sleep loss – waking as often as every 15 minutes throughout the night for a period of almost 3 years – the work encapsulates the haze of the perpetual tired. Snatches of pleasant, nostalgic melodies filter through a wall of grit and noise, the result of the repeated over-dubbing of reels, an increasingly worn tape medium burying whatever clarity there might once have been in an endless wash of artifacts and decay. Merging minimal neo-classicism with drone, minimal electronica, noise, glitch and sound design, the album offers a tense and fragile journey through a disparate, impoverished landscape, the soundtrack invoking a sensory world always on the brink of collapse.

Score – ‘Still Moving’
Recorded in 2017 & unreleased until now, ‘Still Moving’ is Score’s fifth album for CN & the stepping-stone between the dark dissonance of ‘Slump’ (2016) & the more melodic optimism of ‘Vent’ (2018). A lush work of shoegaze-dream-pop-tronica with impeccable production detail that Chris Tate is famed for. The perfect soundtrack for an autumnal duvet day.

Todeskino – ‘Debutante’
Hailing from Düsseldorf, ‘Debutante’ propels the listener into a Lynchian experience that draws warm, dreamlike ambience combined with lo-fi field recordings & classical sounds, creating a nostalgic trip back to sweet & melancholic memories.

Mitternacht – ‘The Snake’
Loosely conceived as a soundtrack to driving along the mysterious, historic route through the Pennines which connects the composer’s hometown of Liverpool with his childhood city of Sheffield, this album attempts to evoke the fierce natural beauty of this treacherous road via electronic soundscapes that veer between blissful ambience & lo-fi techno.

Cavesnake – ‘Cavesnake’
London-based duo, Cavesnake started writing and creating together circa 2013. Oxgoat and Sikander Louse came together through a shared love of ugly, blown out Black Metal, achingly beautiful ambient soundscapes, and deep space horror. They use the interstitial zone of Cavesnake to explore themes of loss, emptiness, ontological insecurity and the righteous acceptance of the impending apocalypse. Cavesnake record straight to tape and through a rigorous process of layering, drenching samples in reverb, re-amping guitar drones through monstrous cabinets, they force their music to hang listlessly in a void space akin to an event horizon. They created Cavesnake to reach the stars, but it has gone much, much further than that. It tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of blissful chaos. Where Cavesnake are taking you, you will not need eyes to see.

Francesco Terrini & Luxury Mollusc – ‘Choir Of Deluded Mass’
Dark ambient experimental noise & power electronics from the Philippines meets atmospheric harsh scrap abuse & ditch-drone from Ireland, in a sound-clash that’s not for the feint-hearted.

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Yins – ‘After Party’
Active vibrations inherent in a disappearing resonance.
Repetition and momentum coalesce and decompose.
Everything becomes a clue toward nothing.
These are memories of the memory of the after party.

Jeff Kimmel/Ryan Packard – ‘Contrast Shifting’
A convergence of clarinet, percussion and electronics in a session of improvisations between two long-time collaborators. An attention to subtleties, at times serene and atmospheric, or pointillistic and playful.

Grein – ‘Taxic Gnosis’
Grein is a collaborative project between Aaron Michael Smith & Jay Rauch, multi-instrumentalists collaborating over a distance, living in Boston and Seattle respectively. Their work explores geological structures of time that form and coalesce through iterative improvisation. TAXIC GNOSIS stretches the soloist between immediate physicality and mediate consciousness. ˛ˇˇ˛ˇˇ˛ˇˇ˛ˇˇ˛ˇˇ˛ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ An ear becomes a room becomes a playback machine, listening for its own death, the sound of subjectivity ++,,..002222332200//2233//11//.. ……,,))!!”””**((&&##”” dissolve self into multiplicity;;

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EXPO SEVENTY – ‘Mystic Caravan’ LP
Mystic Caravan comes out of a collaboration proposed by Burial Beer (Asheville, NC) & Unseen Creatures Brewery (Miami, FL). Two fans of music & compassion for beer making came forth with the idea of making a beer for Justin Wright’s project Expo ’70. Months in the making, this vision finally sets sail! This release is comprised of 4 studio rehearsal multi-tracked sessions, two working songs and two improvised tracks compile “Mystic Caravan”. Following the heels of “Evolution”, continuing the lysergic journey into the cosmos songs weave the listener through epic psychedelic doom influenced trance-like slabs of sonic enjoyment. “In The South” is a tribute to Cluster’s “Im Süden”. EDITION OF 300 (100 yellow / 300 black). Mystic Caravan, the IPA. Mashed with barley and rice. Fermented on lychee fruit. Double dry-hopped with Citra, Nelson and Topaz. Fog machines of sticky kush, heavy sap leaking from broken guitar necks, snares coated in clementine rounds and grumbling bass vibrating lychee tapioca tea. 7.0%. Available at Unseen Creatures in Miami, FL & Burial Beer in Asheville, NC.

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HIRAM – ‘Water Rise’ C30
An offering of ethereal evaporation sound from HIRAM, bearing new works in morphing formation. Several pieces document the artist in live outdoor solo actions over the Summer of 2021, with music created both in the midday shade of the Mississippi River’s shore in Minnesota, and under the nighttime desert skies of New Mexico. The track “Wind Song” is built upon the grace of nature’s breath, with field recordings from Joshua Tree, CA blending with the melody of a 15 string zither. Hiram’s use of horns, flutes and reeds through the work breathes an air of life, with electric piano, voice, chimes, tongue drum, shruti, tanpura, synthesizer and tapes mixing with the sounds of the environment, connecting self to space in a new form of harmonic resonance. Music for condensation. Dedicated to our Earth’s most precious water, bringer of all life. Real time duplicated, clear shell Chrome Type II c-30 cassette with b/w printed labels and hand-stamped green ink detail. Comes packaged with double sided 12 pt gloss cardstock J-card, featuring original full color photography from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Limited edition of 40 copies.

JASON ALLEN MILLARD – “Solid Enough” b/w “Dark of Night” 7″ lathe
A lovely dish of blasted basement balladry from J.A.M. “Solid Enough” brings a late night deep twang, with a lost highway tone and shambolic strum. “Dark of Night” is wedged into an opposing corner, with J’s tell-tale magnetic blur and warped acoustic zone, some weird shit hides in the shadows. “I’m up all night hearing my wheels spin. Up all night, up at night again.” Square record cut in MONO to clear polycarbonate with printed b/w labels and hand-stamped metallic silver ink detail. Housed in clear poly inner sleeve and packaged in white reverse board outer pocket sleeve with custom paste-on artwork featuring original photography with silver hologram printing. Ultra-limited edition of only 10 hand-numbered and stamped copies.

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PADANG FOOD TIGERS – ‘God´s Plenty’
The London duo of Stephen Lewis and Spencer Grady – introduce us to an enchanting world, often surreal, ambient-folk tapestry full of dreamlike reveries and poignantly real memories. Although the music is deeply rooted in blues and folk, we can hear echoes of Ry Cooder or Virginia Astley, their approach transcends anything you have listened to before. Magical.

MOON-LITERS/MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS – ‘Nerve Agent!’
Philadelphian D. Liedel offer us a peculiar blend of rock, jazz, electro, metal, hardcore punk, mambo and calypso. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the familiar melodies, because anything can happen at any second in surprising ways. Authentic, grounded and profoundly popular.

LUIS LOPES LOVE SONG – ‘Emmentes’
Third opus of Luís Lopes Love Song series on Shhpuma, this time with only a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar. Since the amount of devotion and give of self that Lopes always puts in is music the result is an intimate, profound and beautiful music.

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Leo Okagawa – ‘Zapping (Station to Station)’ 8€
Leo Okagawa is a sound artist living and working in Tokyo, Japan. He creates music mainly with field recording and raw noises. Zapping (Station to Station) recorded through quarantine in Japan. His main audio material was recorded in metro stations and radio stations, between April – May of 2021.

Stephen Cornford – ‘Domestic Music’ 8€
A state of enclosure” was recorded May 2020 for AMPLIFY 2020: quarantine.“A finite number of rooms” was recorded June 2020 for the ‘Building A Better Reality’ Black Lives Matter benefit compilation on JMY Music. Both are loosely based pages from ‘A Score for Piano’ written by Sarah Hughes in 2010.“After their departure” consists of a hearth recording made in January 2021 and a cassette recorded years before and found again in March 2021.

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